Engels in Manchester – International Conference

University of Salford

30 November – 1 December 2024 – Manchester/Salford

Co-hosters: 

–    The International Association of Marx-Engels Humanities Exchange and Studies (MEIA)

–    University of Salford

–    Canterbury Christ Church University

–    The Marxism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom (PSA)

Call for Papers – 

Manchester and Salford were the world’s first industrialized factory-cities of the railway age. They were surely what Marx and Engels had in mind when they wrote in the Communist Manifesto of ‘whole populations conjured out of the ground’. Engels knew the twin cities from the age of seventeen, taken there by his father on a business trip. And it was to Manchester that he took Marx – on his very first trip abroad – in the summer of 1845. After that their personal and epistolary – and indeed pecuniary – relationship was more to do with Manchester than anywhere else, till Engels retired the two of them to London in 1869.  Manchester and Salford were the world’s first industrialized factory-cities of the railway age. They were surely what Marx and Engels had in mind when they wrote in the Communist Manifesto of ‘whole populations conjured out of the ground’. Engels knew the twin cities from the age of seventeen, taken there by his father on a business trip. And it was to Manchester that he took Marx – on his very first trip abroad – in the summer of 1845. After that their personal and epistolary – and indeed pecuniary – relationship was more to do with Manchester than anywhere else, till Engels retired the two of them to London in 1869.

We invite paper-proposals on these themes below, though other ideas will certainly be considered:

• Class/gender/race conflict and urban politics in the industrializing world
• Modernization, colonialism, empire, wage/slavery, global political economy, primary products and luxuries, consumption and addiction, ‘free’ and forced markets
• International and intra-national politics of revolution, war and counter-revolutionary reactions
• Ecology, built environment, environmental change, climate change, pollution, public health
• Social reproduction, kinship and domesticity, women and gender-oppression, sexualities and socialisms/communisms
• Philosophy and politics, philosophy and science, dialectic and logic, materialism and idealism, industrial technologies and capital accumulation
• Political organization and action, coalitions and strategies, constitutional liberalism and social democracy, parties and networks, agitators and activists, resistance and progress
• Consent and obligation, compulsion and freedom
• Marx and Engels, associates and collaborators, opponents and enemies, wives and partners, servants and family members
• Museums and memorials, memory and recovery, publicity and propaganda, visuality and meaning-making, culture and communication
• Practical materialism, utopian thinking, pasts and futures, histories and knowledge
• Geographies, sociologies, human sciences, physical sciences, hermeneutics, positivism, spaces, places

Requirements:

1. Proposals should include name(s), affiliations, title, abstract (up to 200 words) in Word or PDF format by email to info@themeia.org.
2. Proposals can be for individual papers or full panels (up to 3 papers, 1 discussant, 1 chair).
3. The organisers particularly encourage proposals from postgraduate students, early career scholars and scholar-activists.
4. There are plans for selected papers to appear in a special issue in an academic journal and/or an edited volume with a major publisher.

Schedules:

• Deadline for paper and panel proposals – 1 October 2024
• Acceptances posted – 15 October 2024
• Programme announced – 25 October 2024

Registration for Participation:

Please send your application to this email: info@themeia.org including your name, organization, position, and the dates you will attend.

Socialist History special issue

One product of the Engels in Eastbourne conference was a special issue of a journal Issue 65 – Friedrich Engels – Socialist History with four essays which originated with the conference –

Revisiting Engels’s ‘The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man’
Sheila McGregor

Engels’ revolutionary accounts of the June Days uprising
Kate Connelly

Engels on Colonialism – Ireland and the Agency of the Colonised
Ken Olende

Navigating Lemonade Seas – Frederick Engels, Utopian Socialism and Strategies for Emancipation
Judy Cox

Many thanks to the Socialist History Society for their work here with this publication, and to the contributors themselves for excellent essays.

Conference delegates supporting efforts to commemorate Eastbourne’s radical history

Thanks again to everyone who came to the Engels in Eastbourne conference which was a great success, with delegates from across the world attending and great talks and discussion – and it will hopefully act to raise awareness about Eastbourne’s radical history and the connection to Friedrich Engels both locally, nationally and internationally. Safe journeys home to all who came!

Please register by 1 May 2023 if possible – thank you.

The refurbished Winter Garden in Eastbourne is going to dedicate a special Paul Robeson Room in honour of Robeson’s legendary performances at the venue during the 1930s period and a special commemorative programme of events is being put together to help launch this.  So far these include a special performance of ‘Call Mr Robeson’ by Tayo Aluko at the Grove Theatre in Eastbourne on Friday 4 November 2022 – details of how to book tickets please see here: https://grovetheatre.onlineticketseller.com/events/20265

Thank goodness Western imperialism has learnt the lessons from their attempts to invade and occupy Afghanistan in 1839!  

Summer is here and many of us are headed for the seafront. We are so fortunate to live in such a beautiful place. Do you recognise this art work of Eastbourne’s wonderful beach ? Who painted it? Where did it used to be sited in Eastbourne?

Some of the Trade Unionists amongst us will recognise it. There used to be a fantastic International Workers Mural in the dining area of The View Hotel, formerly the Transport and General Workers Union Recuperation Hotel and Conference Centre. It was painted by an Arts Collective that included Michael Jones, son of the Great Trade Unionist Jack Jones.

[Many thanks to Heinz Birch, former German Democratic Republic (GDR) Charge d’Affaires, for kindly allowing us to translate and republish this extract from his autobiography Wiedersehen, ich gehe in die Fremde : Streben für eine bessere Welt (2017) on this website about his role in unveiling the original Engels plaque in Eastbourne in 1976]

At this point I would like to mention a recreational place on the coast of Great Britain that Friedrich Engels once chose for days of recreation.  He spent several holidays in Eastbourne.  This place apparently exerted a special attraction on him.

The place in which Engels lived during his stays on the coast was a popular weekend destination for members of the Embassy.  The consequence of this was that the East German diplomats entertained good relations with the trade unions in Eastbourne.

At some point a thought matured to remember and commemorate Fredrich Engels at this historic place with a memorial plaque.  The festive unveiling of the plaque took place in May 1976.  Because Karl Heinz Kern was on holiday during this time I as his deputy conducted this ceremonial act in the name of the DDR and in the presence of the mayor.  The Tory – member of the Conservative Party – insisted on inviting us and other guests to a reception in the town hall and afterwards to a concert in the theatre of the town.

This mayor not only possessed an awareness of history but also proved to have courage because for, the enemies of progress, the commemoration of Friedrich Engels, the loyal companion of Karl Marx was a thorn in their side.  When we unveiled the plaque ceremoniously, there were supporters of the National Party [Front] – the neo-fascists – standing on the other side of the road with flags and posters and they were trying to disturb the event with their shouting and smearing.  But success was denied to them.  Under the strict supervision of the local police they were held behind a pen erected specially for them.

After the unveiling of the plaque we visited the place on the steep coast from which Friedrich Engels ashes were given to the tumultuous sea according to his final will.  We were fortunately amongst ourselves.  It was an elevating feeling to think back to this 27 September [August] 1895 on which one of the great thinkers of the international working class found his final resting place off the coast of Beachy Head in the presence of Eleanor Aveling, Karl Marx’s daughter.

Edited to add – letter in Sussex Bylines from Sheila Taylor

Engels’ plaque campaign

Dear editor

Carol Mills’ Engels in Eastbourne article, mentioning the original plaque to Engels, aroused memories for me too, as I helped to organise the unveiling event. I was Secretary of the Britain-GDR Society at the time and was invited by the local organisers to give the commemorative speech at Beachy Head. A dramatic location for a public speech! On the clifftops above the sea clutching my typed script, I read out the history of Engels in Eastbourne, glancing up from time to time at Heinz Birch’s encouraging smile in the front row. A Guardian journalist had spotted this highly unusual event and wrote it up as a feature article, gleefully mocking our little gathering of naïve idealists. The East Germans and I were all very sad when right-wing vandals forced the plaque to be removed. I’d be delighted if it could be reinstated!  It would be fun to be in touch.

Sheila Taylor

Secretary, The Britain-GDR Society (1976-80)

Edited to add again – many thanks to Sheila Taylor for providing a copy of her speech on the day – see scans below

Sheila Taylor speech page 1

Sheila Taylor speech page 2

Sheila Taylor speech page 3

Sheila Taylor speech page 4

Engels and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – a digital self-guided walk of some of Eastbourne’s radical history.

Eastbourne was designed and developed by its landowners from the 1850s onwards. Built as a new resort for the rich, the population greatly expanded from less than 4,000 in 1851 to nearly 35,000 by 1891. The town was owned by just two families, the Davies-Gilberts who owned about a quarter of the town, and the Cavendish family, notably William Cavendish, the 7^th Duke of Devonshire, who owned about 2/3rds of the town.  From 1859, plans were laid out to build an entirely new town to attract the higher echelons of society to either live or to holiday here. Designed as a new resort, Eastbourne was built “for gentlemen by gentlemen”. The working classes of the town were kept hidden from the sight of our elite visitors in the Seaside area to the East, where visitors feared to tread.

Opening in 1880, the Queens Hotel, near the Pier, was the last of the grand hotels to be built in the town. It was thought to have been deliberately positioned to provide a visual marker for the end of the Grand Parade to the west. To the East of the Queens Hotel there were smaller hotels and boarding houses built largely between 1790 and 1840. There was no road along the seafront on this side of the pier. Visitors were advised ‘don’t go east of the pier, dear’. Though there are accounts of curiosity excursions, for the elite, into the Seaside area, so they could literally ‘see how the other half lived’.

And just as the working classes were kept hidden from the sight of our elite visitors, so too nowadays has much of the town’s radical history been hidden.  Some of us wanted to put this right. So; this walk was written to give a snapshot of just some of Eastbourne’s more radical history.  Engels and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is Eastbourne’s Radical History Walk No 1. It is an around the town walk, starting at Eastbourne railway station and ending in Meads Village.

“Every generation must fight the same battles again and again. There’s no final victory and there’s no final defeat and therefore a little bit of history may help”. Tony Benn.

We will be seen, and we will be heard, and we will build a better world.

Eastbourne Pilgrimage Project Walk

The walk was written as part of the Engels In Eastbourne Campaign. Thank you to the Eastbourne Pilgrimage Project for their support and encouragement in bringing this walk to you. You will find the walk map and the accompanying pamphlet on their website – see below for links.  We hope you enjoy.

Local Pilgrimage Walks including Engels and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Eastbourne Pilgrimage Walks website

Carol Mills

Bathing Scene Eastbourne

It was a long hot summer in 1929 and there was a late heatwave. The 1920s saw the seaside opening up to the working classes thanks to improved working conditions, paid holidays, and an affordable railway network. No longer was Eastbourne the sole preserve of the elites. The heyday of bathing carriages and servants was drawing to an end. Many resorts had already done away with imposing charges and only allowing those who hired a bathing carriage and corporation towel to enjoy sea bathing. The working classes no longer had to keep to paddling with their hankies on their heads as they could not afford the charges.  8p per half hour for the carriage; 2 pence for a towel, plus tip. That was nearly a shilling a dip. So, for a family of 4 for a week this amounted to over £1, or about £70 in today’s money! No, a new working-class bathing habit had arrived in the resorts – the mackintosh bathers. Visitors would arrive on the beach straight from their guest houses already clad in their bathing gear and with their long mackintoshes covering over. Most resorts by 1929 were resigned to the changes and had abandoned the charges. But Eastbourne was not having it. Those in charge were resisting the vulgarity of free bathing.  Eastbourne was determined to hang on to its ‘elite resort’ status for as long as possible. Council officials patrolled the pebbles issuing stern warnings. There were bylaws you see; Eastbourne could not be doing with the common people. And besides, 1928 had seen £5,300 profit for the Corporation – that is £300,000 in today’s money. This was double the profit of 1927.  So. What was it to be? Profits or people? Time for a showdown.

September 13^th, 1929 was ‘the day class war came to Eastbourne’. The ‘Bolsheviks of bathing’ had their sights set on action. An act of civil disobedience saw 150 mackintoshed men and women march their way to the shore with the puzzled onlookers not knowing what to make of it. The beach patrollers rallied upon the protesters demanding their names and addresses so that official letters of reprimand could be correctly executed. The ultimate sanction.

The Eastbourne Mackintosh Rebellion hit national headline news for some full 5 days.  The country was on the side of the people. The bathing carriages were described as smelly, dirty, and damp. One reporter asserted: –

‘the name of Eastbourne should stink in the nostrils of holiday makers until Eastbourne’s governors are changed!’

the Corporation response,

‘we do not mean to be vindictive, but we will not have our authority flouted!’

Anyway. By 1932 almost all charges across the country had been abandoned. The end of an era. Even for Eastbourne, that oh so exclusive town ‘built for gentlemen by gentlemen’.

Information and photo ‘Bathing Scene Eastbourne’ courtesy of Charlie Connelly from the podcast https://podcastaddict.com/episode/96072451   8: The Eastbourne Bathers’ Rebellion of 1929. 14 Feb 2020.  For more “Great stories from around the coasts of Britain and Ireland”, please see the Facebook Page Coastal Stories Podcast, brought to you by Charlie Connelly, bestselling author of ‘Attention All Shipping’.   For more on Radical Eastbourne see here